1898.] Annual Address. 85 



pur, which circumstance shows that while Kalikata existed in 1495, the 

 other two villages did not. 



The idea still much entertained that Calcutta has received its name 

 from the celebrated shrine of Kalighat on the " Old Ganges," is altogether 

 wrong, Not to mention the philological difficulties which are fatal 

 to the identification of Kalikata with Kalighatta, their identity is totally 

 precluded by the fact that in 1495 both localities were in existence and 

 occupied the same, or nearly the same, places as they do now. Bipra 

 Das's voyager, having come by the town of Hugli and obher places, 

 passed the village of Kalikata, and journeying on reached Betor, near the 

 modern Shibpur, and thence he went on to Kalighat, where he 

 worshipped at the shrine of Kalika. The fact is that the derivation 

 of Calcutta from Kalighat is one of the many utterly unfounded popular 

 etymologies. Its real derivation is still quite unknown. The probability 

 is that it is a word from some aboriginal language : and tliis would 

 be only one more evidence pointing to a considerable antiquity for 

 the site of Calcutta. 



With regard to the origin of the Kalighat shrine, I may add that 

 according to a current tradition it was founded, early in the fifteenth 

 century, by an ascetic called Jaqgal Gir Chauraijgi. " One evening he 

 was performing his devotions by the bank of the *' Old Ganges " which 

 was then a great stream flowing south of Calcutta, when suddenly a bright 

 light shone round about him, and that same night, when he had gone 

 to sleep, the goddess Kali appeared to him in a dream, and told him 

 that the spot was one of those holy places which had once received a 

 portion of her severed body. The next day he dug up the ground, and 

 proved the truth of his vision. The sacred emblems thus miraculously 

 found, being the toes of her right foot, were set up for worship in a 

 small wooden house on the bank of the Adi-Ganga."^7 From the original 

 founder of this wooden shrine, our well-known fashionable quarter, 

 now known as Chowringhee, but which at that time was a wild jungal, 

 is supposed to have obtained its name. The present substantial temple 

 was erected in 1809 by the Savarna Chaudharis of Behala. 



The story of the Black Hole, as you know, is intimately connected 

 with the Old Fort William, which as I have already remai-ked, was built 

 in 1696-97. At the time of that tragedy, in 1756, Calcutta " extended 

 in a crescent along the bank of tlie river from north to south for about 

 three miles (say from modern Chitpur Bridge to the site of the present 

 Fort). Standing nearly midway between those limits was the little 

 Old Fort. The houses of the English inhabitants were scattered in 



t>T See Wilson's Early Annals, pp, 129, 130. 



